


it's like a religion

by whateverthebeeswant (somnifero)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Cas and Dean get all the nice things, Castiel comes back, Episode: s15e18 Despair, Fix-It, GET IN THE CAR LOSER WE'RE GETTING CAS BACK, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, Pre-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, andrew dabb can go to turbo-hell, i am filled with feral rage at cXXXX oX, its better than the finale i promise, not that thats a very high bar but
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:01:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27639941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somnifero/pseuds/whateverthebeeswant
Summary: Sam finds him, not Jack, thank God (that bastard), on the dirty storage room floor, a whiskey bottle on one side and a halo of glass at his head.///In the dark there is an angel singing.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35





	1. I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw the finale, got angry, and immediately wrote 3700 words of this shit.
> 
> That was the finale, so you know what? These characters are*ours* now and damn if I'm not going to give the boys a happy ending.
> 
> Title from Richard Silken's "Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out", which I highly recommend as it reminds me a lot of the boys.
> 
> The excerpt this is referencing (formatting is message up; apologies):
> 
> _You said I could have anything I wanted, but I  
>  just couldn’t say it out loud.  
> Actually, you said Love, for you,  
> is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s  
> terrifying. ___
> 
> _  
> _I love you all <3_  
>  _

Castiel may have been an angel, created by the heavens above to be a perfect instrument of God’s will, but he could make a _mess_ when he wanted to and often when he didn’t even intend to. There was the whole heaven and hell and purgatory business, but it was mostly smaller things like how he never cleaned up the kitchen after he cooked. That would have been fine; Sam and Dean had an unspoken agreement that whoever didn’t cook did the dishes, but Castiel rarely made anything edible even for the most desperate of street raccoons. He scattered water all over the bathroom and the hallways after a shower so that Dean had to drag him back into the bathroom to towel off his hair his damn self, Cas sulking and stoic while Dean rubbed his hair back and forth until it stood up, looking prickly and soft at the same time. _Dean, I am perfectly capable of drying my own hair._ And Dean would huff, shove the towel at him, tell him that he needed to do a better job and that these were communal areas and he was lucky his hair wasn’t as long as Sam’s because otherwise they would need a mop every time he washed up but Cas would be watching him, not smiling but still immeasurably _fond._

But when Cas leaves, there’s nothing. Nothing but empty (or, more accurately, the wall where the Empty had emerged from and snatched him away, and maybe the Empty is gone but it still feels here, and real, more real than the inky black tentacles that pulled his angel into a place worse than hell). 

Dean wants to drag him back, but he knows that he _can’t;_ Jack was the one who did last time, and Dean could only sit, helpless, at Cas’s body as he stared at the sky and begged God— Chuck— to bring him back. Chuck certainly isn’t about to start doing them any favors now. Jack’s juice is all dried up, and everything is probably fucked anyway, and Dean has never felt so disappointingly _human._ Cas dragged him, _saved_ him more times than he can count, and did it one more time just now as Dean could only stare and barely speak coherently, Dean is desperately, _desperately_ aware of his inadequacy to do the same. 

_Don’t do this._ He raises a hand, strikes his head. _God, Dean, ordering him around when he’s trying to sacrifice himself for you,_ _trying to_ save _you_ _. That’s exactly what every guy wants to hear_ _before they take their final breath_ _._

His phone buzzes on the floor like a headache, the rattling reverberating around the tin can they call a home. 

There is no one left to call. No one left to save them. Sam is calling, but Dean trusts him to find his way back. They are outnumbered, outmatched. Dean can’t even find someone to look to, someone to _pray_ to, because they’re all gone, no God left to yell at anymore if only because Dean doesn’t want to give him something to laugh over. No heavens to search for a whatever-the-hell-brings-him-back- _ex-machina._

Dean puts his head between his arms and stares at the floor.

///

The Men of Letters had not intended the bunker to be a place of permanent residence except for the most esoteric of their numbers. Most must have had other safehouses, residences where they could take up when they weren’t buried in books. Their lives as hunters had been solitary ones, but there was no reason for that solitude to be spent with other crusty hunters in a bunker when there was plenty of land untouched nearby. 

Dean knows this because he can hear every step, even the padding of the most carefully socked foot padding along he industrial hallways and creaky staircases. That's how he knows when Jack and Sam reach the bunker, the buzzing of his phone long since relegated to the background silence. 

Dean hasn’t prayed to Cas the way you’re supposed to pray to angels in years. It’s easier than messaging sometimes— especially because Cas sends too many emojis and this way he can’t necessarily talk _back_ right away. A couple times on hunts he’s prayed quickly— _we’re in the basement_ or _five ghouls, not just a few like we thought, be careful._ Other times when Cas has stepped out _pick up some extra coffee, Sammy and Jack drank it all_ or _you’d better not be buying any of that skim milk shit, I don’t_ care _if Sam said it was healthy._ In the morning, with a side-glance at Sam _if his hair gets any longer I’m going to need you to hold him down while I go at him with a pair of scissors._ At night, when fighting over what movie to watch _if you say that you want to watch The Incredible Hulk over Iron Man I’m disowning you._

Because the thing about Cas is that he’s _here_ now. It’s not like when they first met, when Castiel was a guardian Dean had to trust carefully,cautiously, knowing that this angel who expressed his doubts and smiled ,who was so fearless and awkward, terrifying and almost endearing (not that he _was_ endearing, and if he was then Dean wouldn’t have noticed, because he wasn’t the type to be _endeared_ by things period). It wasn’t like in Purgatory or after he ran off with the Angel Tablet, because by then Dean _knew_ he needed Cas but he wasn’t there. These past years Cas had been solid and smiling and _safe._

He was supposed to be safe. He made a deal with the empty, and honestly Dean should be pissed at someone, but all he can think is that he should have seen this coming. All he can think is that he should have pulled Cas back to him. Cas is gone, and the best case scenario based on what he had told Dean about the Empty is that he is sleeping soundly. Somehow Dean doubts the Empty will be quite so charitable. 

Dean sits on the floor as exhaustion, bone-deep weariness that strikes at the very corners of his being, sinks into him and he cannot imagine sleeping ever again. Let them sleep together, at least. Let them fall into the darkness together. 

“Dean?” There is Sam. Sam kneeling beside him. Sam, his baby brother with creases around his eyes, not enough of them from laughing. Sam with scars on his face where there should be smile lines instead. 

“He’s gone.” He still doesn’t look at Sam. 

“They’re all gone.” Jack’s voice is shaky from the door. “All of them. Everyone— everyone but us.”

Dean does look up at that and his chest aches at their state. “What do you mean?”

“We drove for miles to get here,” says Sam. “There’s no one left.”

Dean nods, numb. He should get up. Sam should see him better than this— God (that bastard), _Jack_ should see him better than this. Some brother, some father he is. Can’t stand now, couldn’t even pick up his damn phone before when Sam was calling, knowing anything could have been happening, knowing that Sam must have been driving down desolate highways, hoping, praying, _don’t let him be gone too._ He made his baby brother chase him down to where he was hiding in the corner. 

Sam sits beside him, their shoulders barely brushing. Jack hesitates by the door but he settles on Sam’s other side, plucking at the fraying threads of his jeans. 

“What are we gonna do?” 

Dean sees the look in Sam’s eye, suspects he’ll find it in Jack’s too— far, far too early for him, freaky, prematurely-aging half-archangel or whatever. It’s the same look John had when he was thinking about Mary, a look that never went away as they got older. A look that was there more and more as Dean learned to look for it. John would never _say_ what he was thinking, but it was the look that gleamed bright when he drank and drank until he said things that he didn’t mean— _he didn’t mean it, Sammy_ because he _couldn’t_ have meant those things because they were family, like it or not, and no matter what you had to say about him John Winchester loved his sons. 

Dean would drink, too. He can’t say when it started, only that it was always there; John Winchester might as well have sent him out of that burning house with Sam under one arm and a bottle under the other. He knew it was bad for him, but he couldn’t seem to care, couldn’t seem to stop, even around Ben and Lisa. And God knows they, at least, deserved better. When he lost someone, he drank. It always started out noble (pouring out shots for those they’d lost, one last way to acknowledge their memory), but when you find yourself passed out in a house of ill repute because you drank too much whiskey to get the old equipment working, your wallet missing and enough unexplainable chaos surrounding you to remake _The Hangover,_ even if you went to the John Winchester School of Not Mentioning Things, you must realize that you have a problem. That it stopped being about them and started being about you about five shots in. 

He tried to get better when Cas had come back, when Jack had become less of a ticking time bomb and more of a son to him. Cas found him more than a couple times hungover (not that he would ever, _ever_ admit to being hungover, because _real_ Winchester men don’t get hangovers, _Samantha_ ) when he was sent to rouse him for a case. He'd always touch two fingers to his forehead, banishing the pain away without a word. Dean always felt a little awkward, but nonetheless grateful when Cas healed him when he was a little too roughed up, whether it was from a demon or from being gnawed on by a vamp, but he could only turn away when Cas proved a better hangover cure than the good old Aspirin and greasy foods trick. 

He hadn’t put the bottle _up,_ certainly, but he’d started talking more. Not enough that any therapist in their right mind would call him a man who could manage even a mediocre level of personal openness, but enough that he always found his way home when he had a few too many, enough that he stopped fearing nights when he couldn’t find a drink as much as he feared the hellhounds and the hooks and chains that pierced his dreams.

Because Dean won’t expose Jack to that because he _knows_ how it felt seeing John like that, it messed him up. And when Cas was around, he didn’t want _him_ to see that side of him either. It was about dignity, at least a little, but it was also how he’d seen Cas in that horrible, apocalyptic version of himself, with the orgies and the weed and the booze. He hadn’t wanted to see Cas like that, not because he was weak and human, but because he was _hopeless,_ because he was so _small_ in ways that even becoming an angel again couldn’t fix. And then afterwards he would see Cas, would remind himself that his angel was still there, still awkward and bumbling and even if he had a touch of cynicism from all the shit he’d put them through— well, at least he still looked at Dean in that way that could never be cynical. But the more he remembered that version of Cas, the more he realized that it wasn’t his angel who reminded him of that desperate, broken man, but Dean himself. And if seeing his angel human like that had hurt Dean— well, Dean didn’t want to prove all the horrible things the angels said about humans right to Castiel. He didn’t want Cas to think him weak or pathetic. 

But Cas is gone, _everyone_ is gone except for Jack and Sammy. And with all of the shit that’s going on, Dean doesn’t think anything he can do— besides maybe stripping naked and singing along to old Cher records— can traumatize them any more than everything else already has. 

So Dean stands up, goes to the shelf, and grabs a handle of whiskey. 

///

Jack gets his first _real_ drink, and by first real drink Dean means first-five-consecutive-shots-of-hard-liquor-so-strong-it-would-make-Crowley-cry and Sam, for once, isn’t a health conscious freak. Up to a point, of course; all of his archangel grace has faded enough to put Jack conclusively in a state where he is running around the bunker with the lightest of weights which results in Sam dragging him off to bed before retreating himself shortly after, leaving Dean all alone with his bottle and his thoughts. Sam isn’t sleeping, but he wants his space and hell, Dean will give it to him, if only because he’s three shots away from punching something just to have something to yell, to rage at. 

Because if there’s no one left, that means there’s no monsters left, which means Dean can’t vent his problems by chopping off a vamp’s head or shooting up a werewolf den or gutting some other sorry monster. The only things he has to take out his anger on are the walls (and despite the grievous hand injury that going up against one of _those_ invites, the option grows increasingly tempting as the whiskey dwindles), the punching bags in the gym (which Dean will not touch because he refuses to take out his anger on something so _constructive)_ , and _himself._ So Dean drinks. 

Because the bunker was not intended to be a place of permanent residence and if Dean listened he could surely hear Jack puking up about a pint of whiskey and Sam knocking about his room somewhere, but it’s still _too_ quiet. Because they should be planning right now, pouring over lore and maps spread out on the table, Dean making snarky comments just to see how exasperated he could make Sam, Cas looking at him with that telltale amusement hidden under a respectable veneer of mature fatigue, and Jack looking back and forth between all of them, taking everything in with those wide eyes that burned so bright at first but have faded too much too soon. Or they should be watching movies, Jack curled up in an armchair as he asks about references every five minutes— he’s worse than Cas, because Cas at least _pretended_ not to care whereas Dean has to explain the concept of disco montages while he’s trying to watch a friggin’ comedy movie, Dean and Cas fighting over the couch and Sam spread out lankily on the floor, yelping when their scuffles lead to him getting kicked in the head. Or they should be laughing or sitting, tired after a hunt, drinking hot drinks on winter evenings, the bunker quiet but for distant creaking sounds and them breathing. Dean likes the sound more than he would like to admit without sounding like a sap. 

Dean finds himself back in storage room P-through-V at some indeterminate hour, having retrieved two glasses and a fresh handle. He sits— falls and slumps, really— near enough to where he was before and faces the wall, faces where he last saw Cas. 

“You know,” he says, pouring out two shots. “If you wanted to see Meg that bad all you had to do was _tell_ me— we coulda found you another sadistic demon girlfriend instead of you jumpin’ some big empty hole’s bones.” He takes a drink, his speech slurred to the texture of molasses. “Like _c’mon,_ man, you really wanna be fuckin’ with something called the _Empty?”_

There’s a vulgar joke that Cas would disapprove of somewhere here. Dean can see him, head tilted like he’s trying to catch up, frowning as he sits across from him, always too put together in his suit and coat. 

He sighs. “You— you never _told_ me,” he says. 

Cas looks at him in that confused way again. _About what, Dean?_

“About— about _any_ of it,” says Dean. 

_You have to understand, Dean, there is nothing you could have done. And…_ he hesitates. 

“Go on, pal. We’ve got all night.”

_The guilt kept me alive. For a time. For not telling you._

“Yeah,” says Dean. “Yeah.” He stares at the drink, drains it and swirls the dregs around until watching the spinning makes his head swim. There’s a metaphor here— the last of Team Free Will circling the drain. “You never— you never _asked_ me, man.” 

Cas is looking at him again. Hopeful, open in a way that Dean knows his Cas so rarely would be.

But this is _his_ drunk fantasy, so let Cas be as open and hopeful and bright as Dean wishes he could be. Let him be all of the things that his angel deserved that he’ll never get now. Let him have everything he could ever want, even if it was something that someone so incomprehensibly precious, so very, very valuable, doesn’t deserve— something like Dean Winchester. 

“You should have asked,” says Dean. “Before— before the friggin’ Empty deal. What you wanted.” He chokes. It’s the whiskey; it _must_ be the whiskey. “Because who the _fuck_ are you—” he stands now, gesturing wildly with the bottle, takes another swig to muffle what definitely isn’t a sob. “— to know what the fuck _I_ want. To know what the fuck I’d give? _Huh?”_ He stalks up to the wall, imagines himself pushing Cas up against it. 

Cas did the same thing, said _I rebelled for this,_ eyes blazing. Kicked his ass halfway back to hell. It wasn’t until later that Dean realized it wasn’t just anger in his eyes, but fear— and not for himself. 

Should have known Cas would have made a great Winchester, with the way he dealt with his feelings. Although maybe that wasn’t fair— he’d only had a few years of human emotions, and Dean was going on thirty. 

“Well I did everything for you too,” says Dean. “All of you. I did it for you. I— ” _I wanted to be better. For_ you. “And then you _leave!”_ He takes an empty glass from the floor, hurls it at the wall. “You leave, _you son of a bitch!”_ Glass shatters, and Dean feels better, if only for a minute. 

He slumps against the wall again, pours a drink in the remaining glass but leaves it, pushes it towards the wall. “Shit. Sorry. I’m— I’m so sorry, Cas.” 

He sits back, drinks straight from the bottle. 

“But you should have asked, Cas.” His head lolls towards the offending wall, as if he stares hard enough it will spit Cas back out, if he rages and threatens. But the Empty isn’t even there anymore, and all he can see is Cas being dragged back again, and again, and again like someone’s playing a projector over his gaze. 

“Sam’s— Sammy’s a mess, must be. Jack is too. We all are, without everyone. Without _you.”_ He sighs. Sam was his brother and Dean would have died for him, but he also could never quite outgrow the kid that had to be strong for Sammy, had to make sure he didn’t think anything was wrong. Had to make sure Sam knew he was safe. Cas could look at him, touch him, see his soul, and he would already know. Cas, he still wanted to take care of, but he didn’t feel _quite_ so guilty when Cas took care of him too. “I want to be better— I _was_ better. I don’t know— I can’t— how am I supposed to be better without you?” He releases a shuddering sigh into the empty room.

“God, Cas.” He curls in on himself, ignoring the class. He’s seen worse. He has a nasty feeling he’ll see worse by the end of the week. “Shit. You— you really should have asked.”

///

Sam finds him, not Jack, thank God (that bastard), on the dirty storage room floor, a whiskey bottle on one side and a halo of glass at his head. 

“Well,” he says, staring at the empty bottle and then at the glass by the wall. “At least you didn’t drink the _whole_ thing.”

Dean doesn’t say anything, shrugs off Sam’s hands, and goes to the shower. He becomes different again, after that; he becomes the Dean Winchester he was in Purgatory, he becomes John Winchester on a hunt, training his boys to fight the monsters, he slips away from the Dean that he tried so hard to be and comes closer to the Dean that Cas first found, in Hell, who tortured souls with the ease of a man flipping open a beer can. If someone handed him a soul to torture, told him that this horrible emptiness would stop if he played along, Dean wouldn’t hesitate. 

And then— and then there’s Michael, in the church. Dean doesn’t trust him, starts carrying the archangel blade on him at all times, but hell if they have any other options. 

And— and knowing that Michael _did_ survive, Michael an angel excluded from Chuck’s extermination, knowing that means Cas might have been able to survive as well. 

But there’s no one to hand him a soul to torture to make the pain stop, so Dean drinks, but he doesn’t pass out on the floor anymore; he drinks coldly, almost professionally— four shots at least to sleep, water afterwards to push down the hangover, Aspirin in the morning.

///

“Dean, Dean, it’s me.”

Cas, _Cas._ Dean doesn’t think to stop, doesn’t think to hesitate, question the logic of the thing. The Empty is never letting Cas go, but Dean doesn’t care. Castiel, _his_ angel, his hurt and damn it all if Dean is going to let him stand outside alone for a moment longer. Damn if Dean will let him down— will even risk the _possibility_ of letting his angel down again. 

But it’s not Cas. It’s Lucifer, and Dean shouldn’t be surprised, or hurt. And when he slips back into the Dean Winchester that he’s pulled on over the past few weeks, he isn’t. Lucifer crows that the Empty spat him back out— so that bitch is awake and thinking again? Lucifer talks about being a team, and Dean looks at him, sizes him up.

“If we do this,” says Dean. “Then you’re on _our_ team. All the way.” 

Sam looks at him, panicked, eyes flicking back and forth. He looks like a goddamned overgrown meerkat, wondering where his brother goes off making deals with the actual devil. 

“He’s our only shot, Sam,” says Dean, stepping forward, pushing against Lucifer almost. “He’s our only shot to get them back.”

Lucifer grins. “That’s the spirit. Guess you _aren’t_ the dumb one after all.”

He makes some other snarky comments, talking about how the Empty is a total ‘B’, talking about how he’s so happy to be back with them, and it shouldn’t be him, shouldn’t be Lucifer back up and walking, but Lucifer _is_ their best chance at getting Cas back and Dean isn’t risking the possibility of letting Cas back down ever again, and when Lucifer is a few snarky remarks away from a Bee Gees rendition Dean takes the archangel blade from his side and stabs him in the chest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm currently having a mental breakdown on Tumblr, my account is [whateverthebeeswant](https://whateverthebeeswant.tumblr.com/) as well, come scream with me! ;)
> 
> I wrote this first chapter in a pre-finals haze so I'm sure there are typos.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments are always appreciated; I haven't written in a long time. Also, if anyone *does* notice any typos (or would like to beta for me-- just kidding-- unless?--) then please hmu.
> 
> I love and appreciate all of you <3 except for you, Dabb.
> 
> UPDATE: thank you [Steph](https://iam-afuckingmess.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing this chapter and helping me fix the typos! you rock.


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean doesn’t fall off the wagon so much as get shoved out of a speeding bullet train into a pack of rabid hellhounds. Sam knows this; Sam has seen him wax and wane. When he was younger he would try this every couple months or so—never admitting he had a problem, but taking a step back for a while, because I need to be in shape for this next hunt, and then something would happen, like John Winchester being his inevitable self or Sammy and him blowing up at each other over college or some person getting hurt, killed even. He’d say he deserved it, and he would move on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _you would look at me  
>  and it never occured to me  
> that you might be choosing the man of your life  
>  you would look at me  
> over the bottles and the corpses  
> and I thought  
> you must be playing with me _  
> "Looking Away" - Leonard Cohen__

In the dark there is an angel singing.

This song is not the song of the Host,  the one the angel heard when he was still connected to Heaven, his brothers and sisters joining together. The song of the Host was not a choir, as much as the believers would have liked it to be; it was a reckoning, it was a conquest as much as it was a song. It was a command that brokered no argument, no emotion, no faults, no failings, not the delicate swell of the gospel choir or the airy breathing on old records.

It was always louder, in Heaven. On Earth, the angel could almost tune it out, especially when his grace was falling. He missed it, for a time, but then when the song came back, louder and angrier and more fearsome than ever before he could only lock himself outside in the cold and tremble. It was not from the cold, like it would have been before he became a creature of grace and starlight. They were angry, the Host, but they were also so few.

And in Heaven, when the angel saw light flicker from green eyes again and again the song was louder than ever before. He wanted to slam his hands over the ears of his vessel and scream, but it would have made no difference. And then, the enemy, whispering in his ear,  _ Good job, Castiel, excellent. _

The angel’s song grows mournful here.

No. This is not the Host. The Host would never be so erratic, so aimless. The Host would not be this: a low hum and then a howl, a burst and then a soft smile, a whimper, a question, a laugh.

It is dark, and the angel keeps singing. 

///

Dean doesn’t fall off the wagon so much as gets  shoved out of a speeding bullet train into a pack of rabid hellhounds . Sam knows this; Sam has seen him wax and wane. When he was younger he would try this every couple months or so—never admitting he had a problem, but taking a step back for a while, because  _ I need to be in shape for this next hunt,  _ and then something would happen, like John Winchester being his inevitable self or Sammy and him blowing up at each other over college or some person getting hurt, killed even. He’d say he deserved it, and he would move on.

When Sammy left, Dean experienced his first taste of rock bottom, but compared to what else he’s seen he barely scratched the surface. He ended up at Bobby’s for a couple weeks until Bobby knocked some sense into him, thumped him on the back, and told him that if he was going to be staying here rent free he might as well help out with the research and his car could use a wax too. But there were also bottles of Aspirin lying around the house, suspiciously within reach when Dean would have a bad night—and Bobby would deny it,  _ I’m getting old and my back hurts sometimes, what of it?  _ Dean has one memory that he thinks might be a dream of one particularly awful night, Dean whimpering and sweating and Bobby wiping a cool, damp cloth across his forehead and telling him to hush now, gruff affirmations and comforts. Dean never mentioned the memory again, but before he left Bobby’s to check out a possible poltergeist situation, he waxed and detailed Bobby’s car within an inch of its life.

“Dean,” says Sam. He sounds concerned, and Dean doesn’t begrudge him that, for once. After all, he’s got a history.

Lucifer fizzles out with an expression of such absurd bewilderment that Dean would smile if he were capable. He is not.

Dean glances at him. “What?” He kicks Lucifer’s body. “He was getting on my nerves.”

“You just killed the devil.” Sam blinks. “Again.”

“Like I said.” Deans leans down to polish the blade, quick and sharp, on Lucifer’s shirt and tucking it away. “He was getting on my nerves.”

Sam’s jaw tics.

“No one told me we were having a family reunion.” Michael appears in the other room—doesn’t fly, just sneaks up on them like the creepy bastard he is.

“We were,” says Dean.

“Chuck bring him back?”

“Empty spat him out,” says Dean.

_ “Really?”  _ Michael sounds fascinated.

“Dean.” Sam puts a hand on his shoulder.

“You’re not  _ actually  _ mad that I ganked him, are you?” asks Dean. “The guys, like, the original asshole. Well, one of three. Four?”

He counts on his fingers: God, Amara, the Empty, and their old pal Lucifer. Maybe throw Michael in there too; he throws him a side glance and Michael gives him a withering stare.

Yeah, definitely throw Michael on there.

“Dean, that was stupid.” Sam looks distressed now.

“The Empty spat him out,” says Dean. “Spat out  _ Lucifer,  _ Sam. That means she wants to play with us now.”  He takes the blade from his sleeve, twirls it around. “Then she’s got to do it on my terms.” 

///

It is still dark and the angel is still singing.

The song waxes and wanes but never quite stops. It is not only sound, but color; it is dark, mournful reds and bright lengths of gold and other colors that cannot be thought of in words but can only be seen through the eyes and senses of a Seraph. But now it is green, the color of the soft moss on the forest floor sparkling with dew underfoot, the color of the sunlight through the leaves. The song is green now, and it grows stronger and stronger by each note. 

There is no one but empty to hear the angel’s song, and some might question if the angel was really singing at all then. There is no one to hear the message that is for no one. The angel himself does not realize this, not truly. The angel is dreaming of green, green, green.

There is no one here to listen, and few would be able to understand, but if there was then they would hear something like this:

_ Dean Winchester is saved. _

///

“I don’t see what the problem is, Sammy. Did you think we were going to hold hands and skip off into a meadow to kill Chuck?”

“Dean, you’re acting crazy,” says Sam. He’s frantic and jumpy while Dean is turning out the cuffs of his jacket coolly. 

“I’m sorry, did I miss something in the last ten years? Since when are we  _ not  _ trying to kill the devil.  That’s been  _ numero uno  _ on the Winchester to-do list for a while now. ”

It’s then that Dean notices Jack, staring sullenly at his father’s body. It’s not disappointment, but dread that weighs down his shoulders. It’s bad enough having Satan for a father, but Jack’s had to have seen him die—what? Two, three times now? That’s got to be traumatizing, even by Winchester standards.

“He was back?”

“For about five minutes,” says Dean, shifting his shoulders back and forth in visible discomfort.

“Do you have a plan, Dean Winchester?” Michael addresses him at last.

“Of course I do,” says Dean. “The Empty kicked Lucifer out, and we all know how much it likes to keep its toys.” He gestures with the archangel blade.

Sam raises his eyebrows.

Michael crosses his arms.

Jack looks sullen, but not by much more. Hopefully that means he’s buying what Dean’s selling. One out of three would be nice.

“We’re the best chance that it has of killing God without direct engagement. It’s like—the Empty is the U.S., Chuck’s the Soviet Union, and we’re South Korea. Or Chuck is the U.S. and the Empty is the Soviet Union and we’re North Korea?” Dean pauses, debating which one of the two deserves to be the Soviet Union. “It’s a proxy war.”

“Dude,” says Sam. “Since when do you know what a proxy war is?”

“Hey, I watch  _ M*A*S*H.”  _ Dean waves his hand dismissively. “Look, the Empty clearly thinks that Chuck is coming for it next, and it's probably right. But if it wants us to fight in its little proxy war, it’s got to proxy us.”

Sam frowns, tilts his head.

“Like, give us shit! Keep up, Sammy.”  S am huffs.

“That’s—that’s not how that word works—” Sam starts.

__ “You killed Lucifer because you want my annoying little brother back?” Michael butts in.

“Yeah, and before you start with that archangel crap, remember that  _ I  _ killed him,” says Dean. “Me, a weak human, right? Me and Sam have beat Lucifer, Amara, the Leviathan—but we need Cas to do it. If the Empty wants us to fight for it, then we’ve gotta have Cas.”

“Why?” Michael frowns. “Lucifer might not be as loyal as your little lap dog—”

Dean’s grinds his teeth and clenches his knuckle on the angel blade, not even bothering to hide it from Michael. If anything he flaunts it. Sam is looking more anxious by the second. 

“—but he’s surely more powerful. Not to mention he still has his wings. I don’t see why Castiel is necessary in this endeavor.”

“Because we’ve always had Cas,” says Dean. “Since he pulled me outta hell, he’s had my back, me and Sam and Jack too.”

“I appreciate your human…  _ compassion, _ Winchester, but—”

“Okay, enough with the holier-than-thou—literally! –bullshit, okay?” Dean jabs a finger in his direction. “Cas ain’t some runt of the litter. Cas helped us seal the Cage the first time around—helped us beat the Leviathan—me and Cas beat friggin’  _ purgatory  _ together, and he wasn’t even juiced up.”

“I assure you I am just as capable in battle,” says Michael.

Sam opens his mouth to say something, but Michael speaks over him.

“We don’t need him. Now let’s put your feelings aside and discuss what we’re going to do now that you’ve messed things up with the only cosmic entity who feels like helping us.”

“We do need him.” Dean paces. “ _ I  _ need him, okay? And I’m not doing this without him, so if you wanna gamble against us, then do. But I’m getting him  _ and  _ that Empty bitch on our side.”

Michael regards him, expression inscrutable. Friggin’ angels. 

“There was always a lot of talk about the self-sacrificing habits of the Winchesters,” Michael says. “I believe some of my brothers and sisters even took bets occasionally. That said, I can certainly see the benefit in being your friend. You are quite…persistent.”

“Yeah, well that ship has sailed, buddy.”

Michael all but rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t proposing anything of the sort.” His lip curls. “That said… I wouldn’t miss another opportunity to kill my brother again.”

///

When Castiel was human, he would sometimes wake up with the intense feeling that he had just been snatched up from falling. He would jump and shout, adrenaline sparking along his every nerve. If he was sharing a motel room with Sam and Dean one of them ( usually Dean ) would raise their head, ask if he was alright, then throw a pillow at him and tell him to stow it. He explained the dream to them one time, feeling more than a little embarrassed at how much it discomfited him. They assured him it was a common human occurrence and that he would get used to it, along with other sorts of mortifying dreams. Dean, in particular, went into great detail about he had one where he was on a hunt and he ended up naked in front of a Lamia. 

He wakes like this, now, the Empty toeing at him as he picks himself up.

“Wakey-wakey, dumbass.”  The Empty  glances at him with wide blue eyes— _ his  _ wide blue eyes. He cannot say whether the guise of Meg or  his own face is more disconcerting. “There’s something wrong with you, would you like to share with the class?”

“You look like me again.” Cas tilts his head.

“Yes, yes,  _ do  _ I?” The Empty glances at him. “Because  _ I  _ thought I looked like your vessel. What was his name? Jimmy?”

“Jimmy’s gone.” Jimmy has been gone for years; Jimmy is dancing with his wife in a house with a picket fence, some little memory of Claire scampering around. Jimmy, long before he had the misguided notion of letting an angel walk around in his skin. He feels a scrape of guilt about Claire—he knows that it could not have been easy seeing her father walk around with another man’s eyes burning behind his, but he has come to care for her, and he suspects that Claire feels some semblance of comfort that she can at least see her father from time to time. Even if it isn’t really him.

“Oh yes, yes, I know. Humans don’t like the Empty, Castiel. If they were here, I would be able to tell.” The empty paces around him, eyes burning. “But you  _ see,  _ Castiel, I thought you were supposed to be just a fuzzy little wavelength. Too many eyes, too many wings, spinning wheels, burn out the eyes of mortals.”

“I’m contained by my vessel.” Castiel frowns, confused. The Empty has swallowed enough angels and demons to know the distinction between a vessel and a true form.

“No,” says the Empty. “You  _ were  _ contained by your vessel. Then I pulled you in here and killed you. Your body isn’t real, it’s what you think it  _ should  _ be.”

Castiel has spent long enough in this vessel that it feels natural to him. Perhaps not as natural as what he was before, but his wings are long since burned out and though he still possessed the ability to  _ burn out the eyes of mortals,  _ as the Empty says with eyes alight, like a child contemplating all the candy they will receive on Halloween.

“Tell me, Castiel, what do you think your brothers and sisters would see themselves as if I woke  _ them  _ up, too? You think they’d still be dragging their little human suits around, hmm?”

Castiel flinches a bit at the mention of his brothers and sisters. The Empty will not wake them up—the clamor they would make at the sight of him would make Castiel seem like a whisper by comparison—but he does not like to think of how many there are, perhaps sinking under his feet or leeching out of the darkness, sent here by his own hand.

“Humans are  _ loud,  _ Castiel,” says the Empty. “Angels and demons I keep for myself—only right that I should have the first of the creations after God pushed me to the side to make room for his little pet project. Angels and demons have the good sense to shut up when they’re not being yanked  _ back  _ and  _ forth. _ ” The Empty’s tone turns from whiny to vicious. “I thought you were just an angel on the nice side of a meddling little Nephilim, hmm?”

Castiel’s frown deepens. Jack has no powers; Jack is all but human now. He could not have called to him a second time. He could not have woken him up.

“We had this conversation last time, Castiel.” The Empty paces back and forth with a manic grin, fidgeting with the pockets of his—Cas’—trench coat. “I need sleep. I need quiet. When you said you would come to me I thought it was assumed you would  _ shut up.” _

“I… I didn’t wake up until you woke me up.” Castiel glances at the Empty. The look of exasperation on his own face is slightly disconcerting, but he can’t say that he doesn’t share the sentiment.

“There. Now he gets it.”

///

Lucifer comes back ten minutes later.

His shirt is still bloody when the Empty zaps him back, and he sits up blinking.

“Now  _ that,”  _ he says, waving a finger at Dean. “Was  rude .”

He looks at the various chains, sigils, and traps surrounding his vessel.

“ _ Rude. _ You Winchesters really don’t know how to treat an old friend.”

“I have a message for the Empty,” says Dean, standing over him, archangel blade in hand. Despite his usual smugness, Lucifer looks wary.

“Well—look, look, you guys, it’s not like me and the Empty are exactly best pals, we’ve only run into each other a couple of times and—” Lucifer holds up his chained hands and Michael slips behind him, holding him as Dean scrapes the blade along his throat. Lucifer swallows.

“Tell the Empty,” says Dean, looking the bastard directly in the eye.  _ For Bobby and Maggie and Jack and all the other sons of bitches you made suffer.  _ “That we’re not doing it without  m- the  angel.”

He steps back and Lucifer breathes.

“You may do the honors.”

Michael stabs Lucifer through the chest.

///

Lucifer doesn’t come back right away. They wait for forty-three minutes—Dean counts—and then Sam pulls out a chair and starts flicking through books of lore. Michael joins him, the both of them facing the body and sneaking glances at Dean. No one says anything.

Dean stands up at last, because Sam and Michael are poring through books stiffly sat together and Dean is kneeling on the floor staring at Lucifer’s body like it might bite—because it  _ might _ —but Jack is lost, staring off at some point in the wall because, presumably, that is preferable to looking at… well, anything else in the place.

“Kid,” he says gruffly, clapping him on the shoulder. Jack startles and Dean nearly jumps back because it’s not the same but he  _ knows  _ that flinch and he hates that he sees it in Jack now. But Jack is looked at him with his wide eyes and Dean doesn’t pull his hand back when he leans into it. “You hungry?”

Jack blinks at him like Dean had asked him what the capital of Nicaragua was or  whether the imaginary lemur on his head was purple or pink. “No?”

“Then get some sleep. We’ll keep watch up here.”

Dean checks the traps, the bindings, makes sure that trap is set where they broke it to free Michael and sits across from the body at some bookshelves. He flicks through an old book on reapers from an era where there was clearly no standardized spelling. He’s not really reading it—he’s got a feeling that there’s nothing in here that will be particularly useful—and he spends most of his time checking his watch to make sure he turned the page and isn’t just staring like a freak.

He has the nasty thought once or twice that he’s messed up their chances. Sure, Lucifer and the Empty aren’t people he wants in his court, but there’s no denying that they’re two of the biggest players left on the board. He’s mixing metaphors now, but whatever. The point, Lucifer was a high risk, high reward gamble and Dean threw that away. __

Everyone is gone now. Everyone gone but the four of them—three of them, really, Michael doesn’t count—and there is no one left to save, no monsters left to fight. So yeah, Dean wants to kill God and yeah, Dean wants to save the world but he’s also  _ tired.  _ He tries not to consider what he would do to bring Cas back . He tries not to consider what he  _ wouldn’t _ do, what he would watch burn to see his best friend again.

Because the salient point, the more Dean realizes, is this.  _ There’s a good chance that Chuck kills them all anyway.  _ He’s clearly keeping tabs on them with the little dog joke and Dean has a feeling that when they adjust, even just a little, to this hellscape Chuck will either toss some new horrors at them or finish the job. Which is to say that their chances of saving the world are slim at best and—well, with everyone already gone, Dean doesn’t even know if they  _ can  _ bring them back, if they could force Chuck into it even if they did manage to beat him into submission. And if they kill him then there’s a chance they ruin their chances for good. It’s not like they’re exactly drowning in options over here. 

So Dean’s gambling. _Because if we die tomorrow, or next week, or next month then I would have been satisfied to see your face one last time._ Because Dean knows that the chances of this next fight being his last are high, and then there’s nothing he can do to see him again, nada, zip, zilch, so damn if he isn’t going to expand his options. _Because I’m not risking fucking this up again._

At some point, he realizes that he’s faded out into his own inner monologue. At some point, that turned into him praying to Cas. It’s uncanny how alike the two feel, like parallel streams, like an interstate merge.

_ So, uh, hey, Cas,  _ he thinks quietly.  _ You probably can’t hear me and that’s alright. There were a lot of times when I thought you didn’t hear me and I still prayed because—because I dunno. It was nice to think there was someone watching out for me up there. ‘Course, I should have been the one looking out for you this time. Pay you back for… for all the other times. _

Castiel pulled Dean out of Hell more than once. Metaphorically speaking, non-metaphorically speaking, whatever.

_ You were my best friend. I’d—I’d like to have thought that you could have told me everything. I guess we were never really good at telling each other the full truth. _

Because they  _ were  _ best friends. Dean had leaned on Cas, ranted on about his problems under a whiskey-colored haze more times than he could count. Cas would smile indulgently, act the exasperated part when he felt the need to, but he could never get rid of that look in his eye.

Like the time that Dean took too much cold medicine and Cas stayed up with him while Dean swayed back and forth on the couch and ranted about the benefits of various X-Men comic series and about who he thinks everyone would be.

_ And I said Sam would be Cyclops ‘cause of his bitchface.  _ Dean had fallen over giggling, slumped against Cas’s thigh. Cas had put a hand on his back cautiously. It felt safe and Dean had hummed in contentment.

“I suppose that would make me Angel?” Cas had asked.

Dean had said no, had bobbed up to ruffle Cas’s hair. “Nah,” he had said. “You’d be Wolverine. ‘Cause of your hair and ‘cause you’re grumpy.”

The medicine had gotten the better of him and he’d swayed towards Cas and he smelled like he’d just showered, like soap and aftershave and they were so close, and then Cas was helping him sit up and Dean thought he looked a little sad. Cas, who could have sobered him up with a touch and banished his cold away but didn’t do it because  _ you’ve gotta’ save you mojo, Cas, and  _ _ Winchesser’s done  _ ge d  _ sick  _ with his noise sounding like a snotty little kid. And Cas had humored him, and Dean always thought that maybe a part of him was enjoying this.

_ And then you took a video of me drunk and used it to blackmail me into giving you the last bowl of Lucky Charms, you bastard. _

Because it wasn’t  _ just  _ that he’d loved Cas; it was that Cas couldn’t feel like he was happy until he let himself tell Dean. Like he thought Dean would push him away? Like he thought that he couldn’t be happy with Dean anyway because he was so messed up? It was that Cas was his best friend and Dean had let him down in so many ways.

_ Not again. _

“Good book?”

Sam speaks and Dean jumps. “What?”

“You were staring at the same page… never mind.” Sam slides down next to him and Dean moves over to give him room.

Dean opens his mouth. Sam holds up a finger.

“You stabbed Lucifer. Twice.”

“You’re just jealous that you didn’t get a turn.”

Sam tightens his jaw and glares. Dean relents, holds up his palms in surrender.

“I seem to recall,” says Sam. “That if one of us pulls some stupid shit then the other has the right to chew them out over it.”

“I thought we had a policy of not talking about these things,” Dean grumbles. And they  _ do,  _ or they  _ did,  _ or they at least used to be stricter about it. Things are leaking through the cracks; Dean needs to take a putty knife and a spackle to the damns they’ve built out. He doesn’t like thinking about what might come out if he doesn’t.

Sam sighs. “Dean.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Maybe not, but you need to.”

“Since when are you Dr. Phil?”

“I don’t know, since he got dusted out of existence with the rest of them ?” says Sam, his voice rising. He seems to remember the archangel wearing their half-brother’s face and he quiets down. “Dean. C’mon, man. I can see—I can see what it’s doing to you.”

Dean sighs, leans his head against the bookcase, his back hurting where the shelves stick in a way that’s clearly not meant to accommodate hunters with poor posture and a lifetime of back injuries.

“Cas said—he says that he loves me.” He doesn’t elaborate. Sam knows that the type of love he’s talking about isn’t strictly platonic—knows that he  _ has  _ that already—and if he tries to be clever about it Dean may actually punch him in the mouth.

Sam, for once, doesn’t push it. Doesn’t even look surprised. He just nods. “I know,” he says quietly after a minute.

“I—damnit, Sammy.” He swipes his hand against the back of his eyes angrily, ashamed. Ashamed that he’s crying now with two archangels in varying states of decay in the room, ashamed that he didn’t have the capacity, the  _ balls  _ to say it before Cas left. “I think I love him too. Fuck.”

“Did he tell you?” asks Dean.

“Not in so many words,” says Sam. He shrugs.

Dean frowns.

“You can see it on him, Dean.” Sam’s voice is soft, like he’s approaching a wounded animal. “The two of you are better at hiding from each other than everyone else.”

“I should have told him.”

“You will.” Sam puts a hand on his shoulder. “You will.”

“I can’t let him down again.”

_ Not ever again, Cas. Never. I’m going to get you out or die trying ‘cause I fucking love you, man. I fucking love you, period. _

///

“I do wonder, what  _ was  _ it about that moment that you let yourself be happy.” The Empty tilts its head, peering at Castiel. “I have to say, it was somewhat  _ disappointing  _ seeing you sacrifice yourself after all. I hoped to snatch you up somewhere more interesting.  _ And  _ you had me do your dirty work.”

“Sorry for causing you the trip, then,” says Castiel.

“Your friend, at least, I saw suffering,” says the Empty. “Tell me, do you imagine he’ll be joining us soon? Not  _ here, _ of course, he’ll go to Heaven. I imagine he has plenty waiting for him up there… well, if there’s anything left of the place.”

“But you  _ did  _ do it,” says Castiel. Despite everything he feels like grinning. And despite everything—despite everything, if Dean Winchester is saved, at least for a moment, then he can rest.

The empty regards him, then kicks him in the stomach.

Cas falls. The kicks come again and again, and now they’re punctuated with terrible, terrible things, all the things that Cas sees in his nightmares. They are the bodies he’s killed, they are Dean blooded and beaten looking up at him, they are all the times he’s let the ones he’s loved down.

There are a lot of times.

“Nightmares, yes, that’s right,” says the Empty. “This is where you’re supposed to sleep, Castiel, for all time. Do you know what the difference between angels and humans is?”

The visions and the blows have stopped but Castiel still shakes.

“ _ Angels,”  _ says the Empty. “Don’t sleep on Earth. They don’t  _ dream.  _ So why the  _ hell  _ are you dreaming? What  _ are  _ you?”

And the blows come again and again and they threaten to drag him under, but there is a song playing somewhere, a song not from him that comes from far away, that slips into his chest and unfurls itself across his veins. There are no words but Castiel doesn’t need them. He looks at the Empty and he smiles.

“Dean Winchester,” he says and his mouth tastes like copper, tastes like the water at the Bunker, tastes like late-night hunts with Sam and Dean. “Is saved.”

///

The nightmares are loud but the song is louder and Castiel is thrumming with it. It fills him in a way that grace never could; it fills him with light that is more than a battery, more than a divine purpose, a heavenly benediction,  _ more _ . This is all for him, this  _ is  _ him, this which wraps him in a way that even the Empty cannot fully penetrate.

Then the Empty falters and Castiel breaks through, somehow, and the Empty is talking to itself, but not really. Talking to someone furiously, talking to themselves.

“Winchesters and their little  _ pet _ —”

“—I said  _ shut up!  _ You were supposed to leave me in the quiet—” This is the Empty turning to someone else, someone that Castiel cannot see.

“—they want to mess with me, they want their little abomination back, their little half-angel— ”

The song grows louder and louder and the world drops out from under him. There is empty and there is black and then there are colors, there is blood and there is gold and then everything is green.

///

Castiel always appeared silently, the softest fluttering of feathers, which led to more than a few awkward run-ins when he still had his wings. He was near-silent even when he wasn’t flying, padding softly. Castiel could always sneak up on him.

There is only a flutter now. There is only this; Lucifer, there one moment and gone the next. The angel’s trap is broken and they do not see him go, but Michael will say that he suspects where his brother has gone, will call him a fool and tear after him. It is not for love that he does this, but it feels familiar all the same.

There is only this, and  _ only  _ this because this is all that matters; there is a trench coat and a huddled form, there is only a soft groan and a puzzled look, and there are only blue eyes are a rumpled head of hair and Dean is on his feet in a moment, sprinting, sliding on his knees to the other side of the room and there could only be this and Dean could live forever.

“ Hello Dean.”

“Hey, Cas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY 
> 
> (also alternate summary: Gay love pierces through the veil and saves the day)
> 
> I'd like to preface this with the fact that I know I wrote about 9k in almost 24 hours (seriously: what the shit) but I am not going to be able to update quite so often, unfortunately. I'm smack dab in the middle of the exams (I did this instead of studying for German) so it might be a few days to a week before I can update again. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated or hit me up on my tumblr, [whateverthebeeswant](https://whateverthebeeswant.tumblr.com/)! Feel free to point out any typos; I am filled with feral rage and thus my grammar sometimes falls by the wayside
> 
> I love you all <3
> 
> UPDATE: thank you to [Steph](https://iam-afuckingmess.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing this and fixing the typos! you rock!


	3. III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.  
>  Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,  
> now the living timber bursts with the new buds  
> and spring comes round again._  
> -Homer, "The Iliad"

One of Dean’s teacher’s was always going on about first impressions and the like. Ms. Browning — or Brosnan or something like that, doesn’t matter— taught Freshman English which doubled as a kind of Freshman Seminar. Dean had little interest in the subject; he’d transferred halfway through August to this sticky little town in South Carolina and figured that once his dad wrapped up a nasty skinwalker case he’d be on the road again. No need to learn the ins and outs of semicolons and Russell Creek High School. 

She never mentioned anything to Dean specifically, but Dean suspected it had something to do with the fact that he first showed up to her class fifteen minutes late, his neck adorned with a pentagram and Christy Milligan’s lipstick, and not a scrap of contriteness to be found. 

So when Dean met Cas— the angelic, robotic asshole who didn’t blink when shot, stabbed, or punched— it made an impression. Dean knows now that Cas isn’t a heavenly tool, obviously, but he still never gets used to seeing him hurt or weak. Never gets used to him seeing like this, fallen. It jabs at something under his ribs. When he first met Cas he rationalized his feelings towards the angel when he was hurt, trying to pretend that it was just the wrongness of seeing a divine instrument of warfare reduced to weakness. Now he knows there are other emotions tangled up in it, obviously, but he never moved past that twinge of  _ wrongness,  _ of expecting Cas to spring up and tilt his head at Dean, ask him what he’s staring at, touch two fingers to his forehead and fill him with warmth and healing or else offer that smile to much the same effect.

And it’s unfair of Dean to expect Cas to always fix him up like that. Maybe that's where part of this problem of theirs came from, him leaning on Cas, driving Cas away, and always expecting him to bounce back and come running to him like a friggin’ yo-yo. Maybe that’s where a lot of their problems came from. 

Dean crouches over Castiel now, holds him up, one hand on his shoulder and the other one cupped around his face. The skin of his throat is warm and sweaty and  _ alive.  _ Dean brushes his thumb against the pulse point there.

Cas blinks but his eyes can’t seem to focus. He’s slumping against Dean; Dean’s not sure if he would even be able to sit up by himself. Dean can’t judge; Dean was exhausted the  _ first  _ time he got dragged out of Hell, and this must be Cas’s third or fourth time. So Dean closes his eyes, presses their foreheads together, and listens to him breathe. 

///

Sam’s ears are ringing. It happened so quickly, so quietly, but it may as well have been a hand grenade, the shocks reverberating around in his ears. Dean is halfway across the room before Sam is even halfway standing and Michael is pushing forward and cursing. Well, Sam assumes that he’s cursing; he’s muttering darkly in Enochian and though Sam only catches every third word he’s pretty sure he’s saying something nasty about them.

He is standing to hover over Dean’s shoulder when he sees Michael turn away.

“Where are you going?”

“Well, it seems like your brother’s plan worked,” says Michael. “But the Empty didn’t just bring back Castiel.”

“Lucifer?”

Michael nods.

“It seems,” he says. “That the Empty has a sick sense of humor.”

“It broke the trap.”

Michael nods again.

“Where are you going?”

“You’re not saying that I’ll be  _ missed,”  _ says Michael. “I have an idea of where my brother may have scampered off to. I’ll contact you when I know more.”

Sam watches him go and wonders how the hell they managed to gain and lose two archangels in the span of a day.

///

“Cas,” says Dean. “Cas, buddy, can you hear me?”

Cas blinks, looks at him.

“The Empty?” He jumps, suddenly awake, but deflates a moment later. “What happened? Dean?”

“You’re safe,” he says. “You’re out. You’re here.  _ Cas.”  _ He brushes his hair out of his face but Cas’s head lolls to the side, his moment of lucidity gone.

Sam crouches beside him. “Here let me—”

“ _ I got him,”  _ Dean snaps, louder and meaner than he meant to. Sam raises his hands in a “don’t shoot” gesture.

“Dean,” he says. “It’s me. Let me help.”

Dean looks at him and nods. “I think he’s running a fever.”

“Can—can angels even  _ get  _ fevers, Dean?”

“Hell if I know,” says Dean. “We need to move him. I’ll grab him if you can open the door.”

“His old room?”

“Nah,” says Dean, leaning down and hefting the angel over his shoulder. “No one’s been in there for months and mine is more central.”

Sam raises his eyebrows.

“What?”

“I didn’t say anything!” Sam protests.

“You didn’t have to. Bitch.” Dean huffs and doesn’t miss the way that the corner of Sam’s mouth lifts up. At least Dean had the self-preservation to not do a goddam bridal carry.

Sam shakes his head, accepting defeat and trailing after his brother. Dean’s shoulder protests at Castiel’s weight; usually it wouldn’t be a problem but he feels like he’s been stuck inside a washing machine on spin cycle for the past couple weeks. Poor lifestyle choices and shitty deities is a more accurate description, he supposes, but it’s not as evocative.

“I heard yelling.” Jack steps out of his room looking bleary but not rested if the marks under his eyes are any indicator. “Is that—”

“Yeah,” says Sam, opening Dean’s door.

“How—”

Sam motions for Jack to follow him and lets Dean tend to Castiel. Dean sets him down, arranging the unmade bed as comfortably as he can. Castiel groans a bit when his head hits the mattress, but he doesn’t stir otherwise.

“Cas?” Dean asks. “Cas, do you know who I am?”

“Dean.” Sam lays a hand on his shoulder and Dean jumps. “Let me see to him.”

“I know that you were almost a lawyer, Sammy, but I’ve been taking care of your bumps and sniffles since I was six so I—”

Sam presses the back of his hand against Cas’s forehead. “Dean, his fever is high. Go get some cool rags.”

Dean hesitates, frozen in place, his fingers worrying the fabric of the arm of Cas’s trench coat.

“Dean,” says Sam. “Go.”

And Dean hears it. Hears the  _ you’re too close to this,  _ hears the  _ you’re panicking, go take a breather.  _ He bristles under it, but he also knows that his brother is right, and that only makes him angrier. Dean Winchester who’s dragged himself and those he loves to hell and back and can’t handle a little fever without having a breakdown. Dean Winchester, who has killed the Devil, is being  _ benched. _

Dean stands and stalks out of the room while Sam asks Jack if he remembers where the First-Aid kit is. He goes to the bathroom and grabs four, five hand towels—he always told Sammy they were useless, that he was a grown man who was going to dry himself off with a normal towel and none of this flowery shit—but now he must concede to Sam’s foresight. Sam, who can sit by Castiel and check his temperature and speak like the world is ending. The world has ended already, but Dean feels like he’s living it all over again somehow, like the last building in wake of a firestorm is shaking at its foundations.

He stares at himself in the mirror. He is harried and tired and there are lines on his face. He probably still vaguely smells of whiskey and how long has it been since he showered or changed his clothes? Castiel died for him—not just died for him, died because he loved him so much, died because for some godforsaken reason Dean made him  _ happy. _

He had mentioned it to Jack and his eyes had grown wide and fearful.

_ He made a deal for me,  _ Jacks’ eyes wide and fearful as he stared at Dean like he might strike him.  _ The Empty said it would take him when he experienced—when he experienced a moment of true happiness. That’s what he said. I asked him not to. _ And Dean had hated the way that Jack looked, so he’d pulled him into a hug and held him there for a moment. He knew why Cas made the deal, and he wasn’t angry at Jack for it. He couldn’t even say that he was angry at Cas for it, but it was adding to the list of things they should have said to each other.

Would it have been worse then? If Cas had explained and Dean knew that he couldn’t give Cas what he wanted, if only because it would kill him. God, but they’re fucked up. 

Because having Cas back is the best thing to happen since—well, since they lost Cas—but Dean looks at himself and sees the hardness in his eyes, sees the panic written across his face. Maybe he seemed charming and righteous and carefree, like an optimist's ideal of the exuberance of humanity, once upon a time, when Castiel had met him. He doesn’t feel carefree or optimistic or charming now. He doesn’t feel like something worth dying for.

“Cool rags,” says Dean. “Cool rags.”

He did this with Sam when he was younger and ran a high fever—he took fever medicine where he could get it, but when there was none to be found and John Winchester was otherwise occupied he would lay a cool cloth on Sam’s head and talk to him to make sure he was still conscious. Sam always got through it alright. He can’t seem to remember how many rags he required in those nights—probably just one or two, since that was usually what the shitty motels were stocked with, but he piles his arms full of rags and returns to his room.

Sam raises his eyebrows when he sees Dean and his many, many rags. He’s holding Castiel up with one arm and pressing a digital thermometer to Cas’s forehead with the other while Jack helps divest him of his trench coat. Dean swallows; Castiel is so limp and weak.

“That should be great, Dean,” says Sam softly. He and Jack get Cas’s trench coat and tie off and set him back down on the bed.

Dean settles on Castiel’s other side and presses the cloth to his forehead. He’s sweating through his shirt but his breathing has steadied; he’s either asleep or something like it.

“He has a fever of 102,” says Sam. “It’s not deadly.”

“For an angel?” Dean looks at him. “Sam, they’re not supposed to be like this. What’s happening?”

“It’s possible that he’s falling again, Dean,” says Sam. “We don’t know how him being in the Empty may have affected his grace.”

“Last time might have been different, Dean,” says Sam. “We still don’t know what happened this time.”

Dean hears the undercurrent there, hears the  _ we still don’t know what the Empty did to him in there. _ And it hurts because even things like Lucifer and Chuck he could daydream about punching in the face, but how is Dean supposed to fight the primordial void?

“What happened is we got him back,” says Dean. “I don’t see the problem.”

“Dean.”

“Last time Castiel fell he was weak as well,” says Sam. “That could be all this is.”

“Last time he came back he was all juiced up in a day,” says Dean. “There’s—there’s no reason—”

“Dean,” says Sam. He looks at Dean so carefully and insistently that Dean feels he has to return his gaze. “Cas is gonna be fine, but he may be different.”

“Well, I don’t—”

“There’s someone at the door,” Jack says.

Sam and Dean both stare at him.

“The bunker door,” says Jack. “Don’t ask me how I know.”

“Where’s Michael?” asks Dean.

“He left.”

“He  _ left?” _

“Dean—”

“Stay here with Cas,” says Dean. “I’ll handle this.”

“It could be Lucifer, Dean,” says Sam.

“Well, then he’ll be in here in a few minutes anyway, so it’s better we know now,” says Dean.

“It’s not,” says Jack.

“Kid, not to be rude, but how do you know?” asks Dean. “I thought you were all dried up.”

“I don’t know,” says Jack. “I just—it’s not him. I don’t think.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Well,” he says. “That’s reassuring.”

“Dean, Cas isn’t going to thank you for getting yourse—” Sam starts.

“Stay with Cas,” says Dean, pulling the archangel blade from inside his jacket. “Both of you. I’ll deal with this.”

Blood roars in Dean’s ears because here, at least, is something to stab or fight or threaten. Here is something he can do for Castiel—he might be a shaking mess to see him like that, but at least here he can be useful. So when Dean throws open the door it’s with cool acceptance that the brings the angel blade around, stopping only inches away from—

“Jessica?”

The Reaper had thrown up her hands and yelped when she saw the blade, but she now levels a glare at Dean. She’s more rumpled than the last time Dean saw her, but otherwise she’s the same. Her black dress is covered in dirt and her hair resembles a bird’s nest—not in a colloquial way. There are quite literally twigs and pine needles stuck to the back of her head, like she’s been rolling down a ravine in her free time.

“Dean Winchester,” she says.

“Jessica,” Dean says again, no longer a question. He keeps his position by the door. “It’s been awhile.”

“Well,” says Jessica. She fixes her hair, smooths down her skirt. There are leaves from no less than five different species of tree leaves stuck to her. “You killed my boss.”

“She tried to kill us first,” says Dean. “We woulda died, if it wasn’t for Cas.” He narrows his eyes. “You aren’t here for him.”

“For who?” asks Jessica. She bustles past him and stalks into the bunker. “Your little angel friend? I thought he was already dead.”

“He was.” Dean follows her and Jessica glares at the archangel blade in his hand.

“Whatever,” says Jessica. “I’m not interested in your little angel boy toy. You can keep him.” She looks pointedly at his right hand. “You can put that away now. I’ve got enough on my plate as it is.”

“Billie wasn’t going to let us go,” says Dean. “We thought she was—”

“Yeah, you thought she was ending the world,” says Jessica. “Turns out she  _ wasn’t.  _ She wouldn’t even let me help you stop the witch from killing our numbers—why did you think she was going to end the  _ world?” _

“Well, at the time we—”

Jessica waves her hand again. “I don’t care what you thought. You killed my boss and then you  _ ended  _ the  _ world.  _ Do you have  _ any  _ idea how hard that makes my job?”

“We weren’t really thinking about you at the time,” says Dean. “Listen, Jessica, not that I didn’t miss you, but what the hell are you doing here?”

“Dean, there are literally billions— _ billions— _ of souls with nowhere to go,” says Jessica. “Heaven is hanging on by a thread, even  _ Hell  _ is overrun. And that’s without bringing Chuck into the mix.”

“Yeah, we’re trying to deal with Chuck on our end too,” says Dean. “We need Death to open this book—”

“You don’t understand!” says Jessica. She is usually so friendly and her slight frame wouldn’t inspire fear in a chipmunk, but when she speaks, deep and angry, Dean remembers that she is as old as death itself. Little-d death, that is; there doesn’t appear to be a big-D at the moment, and even if there was he or she would only be a week or so old. “Reapers have been a neutral force for  _ millennia.” _

“Pretty sure your pal April wasn’t neutral when she tried to kebab our friend.”

Jessica fixes him with a withering stare. “I’m sorry that a rogue reaper slept with your angel and tried to kill him—”

“Didn’t try! Did!”

“Whatever.” Jessica waves her hand. “Like I said, no interference policy.”

“Yeah, you were pretty strict about that earlier,” Dean huffs.

“Then you’d  _ realize, _ ” says Jessica. “That we don’t ally ourselves with anyone. Heaven, Hell, God, the  _ Empty  _ itself.”

“Are you working this up to be a ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ speech?” asks Dean. “Because those don’t tend to work on me.”

“You’re welcome to try.” Jessica raises her chin defiantly. “But you should listen to the message first.”

“Dean, what’s—” Sam creeps out of the hallway and blinks when he sees Jessica. “Jessica. We thought you were—” He stops. “Well, we weren’t sure where you went.”

“Well, as I was explaining to your  _ brother,”  _ says Jessica. “I’ve been busy.”

“Reapers are having an issue with increased demand,” says Dean.

“It’s like a Thanksgiving dinner being run through a toilet,” says Jessica. “A shitty public restroom toilet with rusty plumbing. And that’s without Chuck—”

“What up with Chuck?”

Jessica levels her gaze at Dean. “ _ Chuck,”  _ she says. “Won’t let us do our jobs.”

“Chaperoning the prom dates?” asks Dean. “Why not?”

“We don’t know,” says Jessica. “And seeing as how you threatened me with a knife, I wouldn't be especially inclined to  _ tell  _ you, even if I was.” She crosses her arms and huffs. “I swear I’m going to jam a pineapple up the ass of the next Reaper who comes to me asking what we’re going to do. I could use Death’s help but  _ she’s  _ not around anymore and— ”

“Yeah, we could use that too.” 

Sam glances at him. 

“Death’s help, dude. Obviously.” Dean rummages through a stack of books and slides one over to her across the table. “Death’s book. Not that any of us can open it.”

Jessica takes it in her hands, considers it. 

Sam blinks like he’s trying to put something together. “So there’s not a new Death yet?”

“New Death?” asks Jessica. “Have you been listening to literally anything I’ve been saying?” 

“So no Reapers have died.”

“Not much to kill us, is there, unless Chuck gets more handsy?” Jessica stalks around the war room and flicks through some of the papers spread out on the table, still holding Death’s book. “Reapers generally have a long shelf life as long as we stay in line. Not many natural predators.”

“Did Billie never tell you how she got the job?”

“I tried not to ask Billie questions,” says Jessica. 

“Guess she wouldn’t want to explain,” says Dean. “When all someone who wants a promotion has to do is a little murder-suicide action.”

“Murder-suicide?” Jessica frowns. 

“The next Reaper to die after Death becomes the new Death,” says Sam. “Cas killed Billie after Dean killed Death.”

Jessica frowns. “I would have heard of this.”

“Maybe,” says Sam. “Maybe not. Was Billie so popular that she wouldn’t have had to worry about a mutiny? And Death has only died twice, both in the past few years. There’s probably little to no lore on the subject because— well— because there was no  _ reason  _ for there to be.”

Dean crosses his arms and looks a little guilty, a little smug. 

“Jessica,” says Dean. “We like you. We have no reason to wish you dead.”

“But you do wish me to be Death?” Jessica asks. 

Dean takes the archangel blade from his side and Jessica flinches, but Dean flips it around and hands it to her, hilt-first. 

“It’s your choice,” says Dean. “But what did Billie tell you?”

“We thought her dead,” says Jessica. “Because your angel killed her.” 

“In our defense, we were pissed about that.”

“You aren’t anymore?”

Dean shrugs. 

Jessica frowns. “Your angel,” she says. “You’re not saying something.”

“This isn’t about him,” Dean snaps. “So if you’re looking for revenge— ”

“I’m not.” Jessica’s gaze is steely. “What did he do?”

“Nothing you’re thinking of,” says Sam quickly. “He’s hurt. We think he’s falling.”

Dean glares at him. 

“You’d trust her as Death?” asks Sam.

“More than the next back of dicks carrying a scythe,” Dean grunts.

“Then we trust her with this,” says Sam. “It’s not like she couldn’t kill us all if she was powered up anyway.”

Dean doesn’t trust anyone that much. Doesn’t trust anyone with Sam, with Jack, with Cas, especially when he’s so weak. But he tightens his jaw and says nothing. 

Jessica regards the blade, turning it over in her hand. “You’ve caused us trouble, Winchesters. More trouble than I’d say you’re worth.”

Dean stares and Sam swallows.

Jessica lunges. 

///

“Lucifer.”

Lucifer barely glances up when he sees his brother. “If it isn’t little Mikey,” he says. “What brings you to this side of town?”

Michael glances around the Dollar General distastefully. “Well, it isn’t the scenery. Who’s the girl?”

Lucifer taps his angel blade on the sobbing woman’s head. “This is Melissa. Melissa, say hi to Michael. We’re having a little family reunion.” The woman stares at Michael with wide eyes before resuming her cries. “Melissa is a reaper.”

“Nice little pet you’ve got,” says Michael. “Want to explain what you’re doing with a reaper?”

“Well, as I’m sure you’re aware, darling little Castiel went and killed Death.” Lucifer tilts his head and waggles his fingers. “ _ Well,  _ technically he has the Empty do it for him, but we’ll give him a little credit, shall we?”

Michael remains silent, crossing his arms behind his back and shifting his stance.

“Well—I think a demonstration is better than an explanation.” 

Lucifer stabs the reaper in the chest and steps back, triumphant as she dies. 

“You never were good at taking care of your pets, Lucifer.”

“No— it’s— ” Lucifer looks at the corpse expectantly. “It’s— any minute now.”

Michael stares. 

Lucifer kicks her leg. “Maybe I need to stab her again.”

“I think you did a plenty good job the first time, but by all means.”

“No,” Lucifer whines. “She should be Death any minute now. Just give her a second.”

“She’s already dead, Lucifer. She died. Are you unfamiliar with what happens when you stab someone in the chest, or do you not generally stick around that long?”

“No, capital-D Death, this is the problem, you never  _ listen  _ to me when I’m talking, I— ”

Both angels freeze, straightening. 

“Was that that son of yours?” asks Michael. 

“Seems like it,” says Lucifer. “Cats in the cradle and all that. You drive here?”

Michael nods. 

“You drive us back to the Winchesters then. I’ll explain on the way.”

///

Jessica is gone for barely a moment. Sam and Dean still flinch when she hits the floor, the archangel blade embedded in her stomach.

She sits up, pulls the archangel blade out of her stomach, and examines the tear in her dress and the lack thereof on her stomach. When she stands, a scythe materializes in her hand.

“Well,” she says. “This is a nice change.”

“Yeah, the whole Death thing really suits you, Jess,” says Dean. “You’ve got the Scythe and everything. It’s like a movie makeover.”

Sam raises his eyebrows at Dean.

“Whatever, dude,” says Dean. 

Jessica looks at the book, considering. Then she grasps the front cover and Sam and Dean both stare, locked on her hand as she hesitates then turns to the first page. 

“Well,” says Dean. “That was anticlimactic.”

“Glad it worked out for you, Jessica,” says Sam faintly. 

“I’ll study it here,” says Jessica. 

“Uh, sure, Jessica. Death.”

“Deathica,” adds Dean helpfully. 

Sam glares. 

“What?”

“You sound like you have a lisp and a busted lip, Dean.” 

“It’s funny!”

Sam gives him an  _ if-you-don’t-stop-you’ll-have-one-out-of-two-for-real  _ look and Dean sighs, admits defeat. 

“There’s some angel lore I wanna read up on here,” says Sam. “Now that no one else is immediately dying.”

“I’m gonna go check on Jack,” says Dean, clapping Sam on the shoulder. “You left him with Cas?”

“Yeah, I’ll come too. You sounded more annoyed than threatened so I told him we were fine.” Sam shrugs. “He didn’t seem worried anyway.”

“Nephilim senses?”

“If he still has them. Who knows?”

Dean returns his shrug and pads back down to the hallway, knocking softly and pushing open the door. Cas hasn’t moved but Jack has pulled a chair up to his bed and is holding a cool cloth on his head as he stares at him. 

“Heya, kid,” says Dean.

Jack nods to greet him but goes back to staring intently at Cas. 

“You were right,” says Dean. “About the door.”

“Who is it?” asks Jack. “I’m guessing it’s not Lucifer or Michael—”

“Yeah, because we’re all alive and nobody’s bleeding,” says Dean. “Jessica. Old Reaper contact of ours. She’s going to help us.”

“With Chuck?”

Dean nods.

“Do you know how you—”

“Dean— ” Sam starts. 

Jack shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I just knew.”

“Was that something you could do before?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes. I’d have…suspicions.”

“Winchester, I believe I’ve found something— ” Jessica appears in the door, still wearing her robe, carrying her scythe in one hand and Death’s— her— book in the other. 

_ “Shit!”  _ Jack yells and jumps back. When he falls, a shield of bright orange light cushions his fall and sends a burst of energy behind him, ruffling Cas’s hair and sending the items on Dean's side table flying. Pictures of him, Sam, and Cas, a shitty old alarm clock, an empty box of Cheerios… Dean’s just glad that he got rid of the cheeseburger.

“It’s okay, Jack, she’s a friend,” Sam says, crouching next to him. Dean follows. 

“What was that, Jack?” asks Dean. “You shouldn’t be burning away your soul—”

Jack looks at Dean, eyes wide. He’s still lying on the ground and he’s gone very quiet, his face white.

“Jack?” Sam asks. 

“That wasn’t soul magic,” says Jessica. Dean jumps, having forgotten that she was there. “He’s perfectly alright. That was Nephilim grace.”

“I thought that was gone.”

“It seems that he’s regenerating,” says Jessica. “Like a little Energizer Bunny.”

“And how the hell would you know?”

“I’m Death.”

“You’ve been Death for two minutes!” Dean snaps.

“I’ve also been alive since the concept of Death was created,” says Jessica.

“Jack? Buddy?” Sam feels for his pulse and Dean only stares. 

“‘Mm fine,” says Jack. “Just...sleepy.”

“Okay, let’s get you back to your room,” says Sam. “Grab a shoulder?”

Dean nods and they hoist him up, helping him back to his room. Jack hardly sleeps anymore, though he tries not to let it show. Still, Dean can’t help but notice that anytime him or Sam is in the war room Jack turns up, no matter what the hour, saying that he’s already slept and asking what they’re doing. Dean can’t tell if it’s a holdout from his Nephilim grace or the result of all of the other crazy shit the kid’s been through. 

Jack passes out as soon as he hits the pillow. He’s asleep, but his breathing is even and there’s more color in his face. That seems like a good sign, all things considered. They could use a couple good signs. 

“He’s stretching beyond what he can be,” Jessica intones, having followed them. Dean supposes they should be grateful she stayed visible at least. “His grace is regenerating and it’s fighting with his soul.”

“And what about Castiel?”

“I’m not here to diagnose your angel problems.” Jessica’s eyes skate over the angel’s form and her brow furrows and unforrows, as if she’s come to some kind of conclusion. 

“But you know what’s wrong with him?” says Sam. “Or you think you might know.”

Jessica sighs and motions for them to follow. “Quickly.”

She leads them back to the war room and she peruses Sam’s stack of research for a moment.“This is all you have?”

Sam nods.

Jessica examines the stack, chooses a book, and flicks through. She stops on a page and spins the book over to Sam, face-up.

“You were right,” she said. “He’s falling, from what I can sense.”

“Why? Is it a Heaven thing?”

“Not so much,” says Jessica. “There’s a reason that humans can’t absorb angel grace. Your souls and their grace—it’s like oil on water. The two can’t coexist.” The glances at Jack. “He would be your exception. Think of him like a 2-in-1 shampoo.”

“Can you put that any more cryptically?” asks Sam.

“Yeah, Sammy here doesn’t use 2-in-1 shampoo,” says Dean. “You’re scaring him.”

Sam glares at him, then turns back to Jessica. “But I thought Jimmy was long gone.”

“Your angel is becoming… less angelic, Winchester,” says Jessica. “I’ve seen it before. Angels falling.”

“Like before,” says Dean. “Or like Anna.”

“Anna… ” Jessica thinks. “Anna Milton. Anna tore out her grace to fall. Your angel is becoming something else. Tell me, Dean Winchester, what do angels and demons have in common?”

“They have to possess others,” says Sam.

“They’re massive dicks,” says Dean.

“Both wrong,” says Jessica. “Neither have free will—not really. Demons are bound to Hell and angels to Heaven. Even Lucifer fell merely to bind himself to Hell. Your Castiel is bound to neither, it seems.” She regards Dean. “Souls and grace. Free will and angels. Oil and water.”

“What are you saying?” asks Sam.

“I believe I’ve found a way to take care of Chuck,” says Jessica, holding up Death’s—her—book. “And I don’t have time to babysit your research. If you have any readings of the Flood, you’ll find what you’re looking for there. It is not only for the sake of offspring that angels and humans were forbidden to mate.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long. been a long week.   
> comments and kudos are always appreciated! or you an shout at me via my tumblr at [whateverthebeeswant](whateverthebeeswant.tumblr.com).  
> i love you all <3


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